Pierre Beauchamp picks up an empty 1.5-litre bottle of ammonia and throws it on the ground, then warns a visitor about the smell and opens a door.

“I used two of those bottles in here,” he says. “But you couldn’t tell.”

The stench is overpowering. It’s been a little more than two weeks since he says nearly 200 cats were removed from the building he was renting out to the non-profit Animal Rescue Network, one of its two locations in Rosemont.

Beauchamp had been fighting to have the organization leave the building, on Chapleau St., for more than a year before it finally did in late August.

Frustrated after months of unpaid rent and not being allowed to access his own building to see what was going on, he blocked the doors one day with two-by-fours. He says he got a call from a lawyer telling him he had to unblock the entrance, but ignored it. Then the Montreal police called him and he knew he had to go.

Three ARN volunteers met him, he said, and he finally went in. He couldn’t believe the number of cats inside or the stench.

He found a dead cat—its skeletal carcass extended on its side, with its front paws crossed—and took a picture of it. He sent the photo to the SPCA and to Quebec’s ministry of agriculture, fisheries, and food (MAPAQ), he says, but nothing ever came of it.

Two people who witnessed the eviction on Aug. 30 said the cats all looked sick and terrified after being kept in filthy conditions. Some couldn’t open their eyes when the lights were turned on.

A frustrated Beauchamp walked around his building two weeks later, explaining how he’s had to strip all the floors and walls. Almost every corner was still stained with cat urine.

“What a mistake,” the 76-year-old said, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“What a headache.”

****

Barbara Lisbona, president of the Animal Rescue Network, insists all she’s ever cared about is helping the cats she takes in.

Through the organization, self-described as Montreal’s largest no-kill shelter, she says she’s taken thousands of cats off of Montreal’s streets since the ARN became a registered charity in 1997.

Critics of the shelter don’t question Lisbona’s initial intentions, but say the situation spiralled out of control over the years, with hundreds of cats kept in deplorable conditions in the non-profit’s two locations in Rosemont, at Lisbona’s home or handed off to undocumented “cat hoarders.”

The Montreal SPCA has an investigation open against the ARN, though it cannot comment on the nature of the investigation, said general manager Nicholas Gilman.

The seizing of animals from shelters deemed inadequate in Quebec is handled by MAPAQ.

Acting on complaints, the provincial agency mandated by the province to oversee the security of dogs and cats has inspected the ARN at least eight times since 2008.

Inspection reports obtained by the Montreal Gazette through the Access to Information Act note a number of issues, which have largely gone unchanged in the last eight years, but ultimately conclude that the animals have enough water and food.

In an inspection report of the ARN’s main shelter on Des Carrières St. from October of 2008, the inspector notes “a high number of cats in some rooms, including one of 15 square metres with 24 cats.”

“Some cats whose health is unknown are kept in open rooms that are not closed: with wire windows adjoining other rooms or hallways where cats roam freely,” it continues. “The floor is stained with what looks like mould. The ventilation system seems to be common to the whole shelter including rooms with contagious animals.”

In a later report from March 2011, an inspector writes that he counted roughly 300 cats in the same shelter, noting “it doesn’t look like the different rooms are disinfected on any regular basis.”

The MAPAQ has confirmed that other inspections have taken place in the last year, but provincial laws prevent their reports from being made public for 12 months because of ongoing investigations.

The last inspection report available for the ARN, from April of 2014, notes rusted cages, inadequate maintenance of the building and the fact that free-roaming cats have access to cleaning products.

At the ARN’s main location on Des Carrières St., there are no signs on the exterior identifying it, only a piece of paper on the front door that warns to keep the doors closed at all times.

Patricia Paulozzi, vice-president of PetitsPawz Cat Refuge, had heard stories about the conditions at the shelter, and says she decided to volunteer to see them for herself two years ago.

“The smell is enough to knock you over,” Paulozzi told the Montreal Gazette. “There’s no ventilation, the windows are closed, you can smell the stench as soon as you walk in the door downstairs. You have to change your clothes when you leave.”

During her visit, she says a volunteer student asked her to help with one cat. The cat was covered up inside a cage in the corner. When she removed the blanket, she said she found a cat “with more ringworm on him than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

She says she asked another volunteer about a cat that wasn’t moving in a cage, and was told it hadn’t been able to urinate for seven days but that the shelter couldn’t afford to bring it to a veterinarian.

A visit from a Montreal Gazette reporter in mid-September to the Des Carrières St. shelter confirmed many of the same issues.

The smell was overpowering. The walls were stained with urine. Fans were installed throughout the space but did little to help. A worker in an adjacent building said the smell seeps through the walls.

The main room, roughly the size of a large living room, housed at least 40 cats. Cats were separated by disease throughout the building — including cats with diabetes, suffering from kidney failure or feline leukemia virus — but some were roaming freely, perched on counters and boxes and anywhere else they could.

A desk where medical files on the different cats are kept was covered in a mix of open cat food cans and medicine containers. What looked like bags of IV fluids hung from the wall above. A container of syringes sat beside a half-eaten, cooked chicken. Containers of liquid and solid medication were pinned to the wall.

A room described as the infirmary held the sickest cats. In the 34 cages in the room, a number of cats were not moving whatsoever, their eyes only shifting when a volunteer approached them.

***

Susan Mackasey, president of PetitsPawz Cat Refuge, says she’s read through hundreds of emails and letters from former volunteers and people with direct knowledge of how the refuge operates describing it as unacceptable.

She’s started an online petition, which has nearly 2,000 signatures, which she plans on presenting to the MAPAQ to get it to take action against the shelter.

One letter obtained by the Montreal Gazette written by an SPCA Montreal employee to the MAPAQ in January 2014 described a situation where a cat had been brought in from the ARN to be sterilized when the veterinarian noticed it was pregnant.

“Not only is it inconceivable to house a feral animal in a small cage for nearly two months,” the letter says of the cat, “but I am amazed that this animal was allowed to develop a full term pregnancy without someone noticing.”

It concluded that the worker feared the cat would be returned to the ARN, described as “an environment that permits and condones the warehousing of animals who cannot advocate for themselves.”

MAPAQ spokesperson Alexandre Noël said he could not comment on specific cases, but said the ministry is “well aware of (the ARN) and keeping a close eye on it.”

“The dossier is following its course,” Noël said.

Ewa Demianowicz, a campaign manager with Humane Society International/Canada, said MAPAQ is known to be too lenient when it comes to enforcing the animal health protection act.

“We’ve seen that there’s a lack of strong enforcement from MAPAQ in terms of animal welfare legislation,” she said.

“There’s definitely a problem there,” she added. “It’s possibly a lack of resources, but there’s also an attitude that needs to change. We would love them to be a little bit more severe and proactive in terms of applying these laws.”

Demianowicz said that despite there being numerous cases of animal neglect that the public would like to see acted upon, the process in place by MAPAQ is “just too complicated and too heavy.”

If an animal is receiving water and food, in short, inspectors can look the other way.

“It could be a lack of resources. We know there are not a lot of inspectors for a very, very huge territory. And seizures cost a lot of money.

“But ultimately they are the authority in Quebec to apply the laws and decide what course of action needs to be taken in different cases.”

***

“It’s just too much now,” said Neil Sullivan, who volunteered at the ARN shelter from 2009 to 2014. “It’s just grown and grown and it’s too big.”

Sullivan said he stopped volunteering because of the way the shelter was being run.

He says he started asking questions about how the shelter was using the public funds it receives—it was common for volunteers to have to buy cat litter or food out of pocket for the shelter.

“You start out, and you’re all gung ho and you’re overlooking the smells and the dirt and everything because it’s for the cats,” he said, “But little by little, you start asking questions because things don’t add up.”

He said he saw cats being treated in “inhumane” ways and kept in “deplorable” conditions, kept alive long after they should have been.

“Bringing a cat down to whiskers and a heartbeat is not a rescue to me,” he said. “Something has gone terribly wrong there. It’s doing more harm than good.”

Between 1997 and 2013, the ARN, a registered charity, has received more than $3.5 million in donations, according to the Canada Revenue Agency. Over the same time period, it totalled roughly $100,000 more in expenses.

Lisbona is the only person who has been listed as a member of the board of directors for every year the ARN has existed. The board shrinks from five people in 1998, to only one, Lisbona, from 2007 to 2013, the last year a report was made available by the agency.

Asked about the expenses, a volunteer accountant who has helped the ARN for the last two years wrote in an email that the biggest expenses are always veterinarian bills, and that the organization could prioritize taking care of injured cats over paying rent. She wrote that volunteers are sometimes asked to buy litter or food but can ask for a tax receipt and “always have the choice to say no.”

When the ARN was evicted from the Chapleau St. location in August, it wasn’t the first time it had struggled to make rent.

A 2004 court judgment awarded Mahamoud Nasr-Esfahani $2,300 in damages and unpaid rent after the ARN left his building on St-Jacques St. in Ville St. Pierre. The ARN was evicted from that location because the permit it was using had been issued to operate a pet store and not a refuge.

“It was a disaster. It was very, very bad,” Nasr-Esfahani told the Montreal Gazette. He said the smell of urine permeated the entire building, and when the ARN moved out, he had to change all of the floors and walls.

He said he didn’t know how many cats would be kept there—the unit is roughly 750 square feet, he said—but he quickly found out it was hundreds.

He initially understood the space would be used as a show room for the cats that were being put up for adoption, but, he said, “they would never open the door for anybody to go and look at the cats.”

***

Suzanne Thibault started following the ARN’s activities following a negative experience after entrusting a dog and cat to it. She heard of the Chapleau St. location being shut down in late August, and wanted to find out what was going to happen to the cats.

She couldn’t get a straight answer out of Lisbona, she says, so she asked a friend of hers to pretend to offer a space for the evicted cats. The idea came while they were driving, and they pulled over in front of a bar on Ste-Catherine St. and recorded the call, she said.

“When can I move them in that’s safe, you don’t want neighbours to see,” Lisbona says in the recording. “We’re going to have to come under the cover of dark for sure, and even late, otherwise,” she says later. “I don’t know your set-up, if you’re in a normal neighbourhood people will see you and they’ll call the police, they’ll call the city on us.”

When asked how many cats are being moved, Lisbona says she hasn’t counted, but it’s approximately 80 cats. Some of the cats are someone else’s, she says, before saying she plans on bringing some to her home and some back to the main shelter.

She’s told the cats could be brought into the person’s home through a garage.

“Is this way through the garage, through the back. Is it secluded? That’s what I need to know,” Lisbona asks.

“I want to do it when people are not going to see us, do you have a garage that we can drive into where nobody would know?”

“The basement has a door into the garage? Can we get a truck into your garage, close your door and nobody would know cats are coming out?”

In several interviews with the Montreal Gazette, Lisbona defended her work with the ARN.

Asked where the cats were taken after the eviction from the Chapleau St. location, Lisbona said she “wasn’t prepared to tell anybody.”

“No way. Nobody knows where they’re going. They’re safe,” she said.

Asked if those who donate to the non-profit organization deserve to know where the cats were relocated, Lisbona said they don’t.

“And they don’t want to know, they want the safety of the cats. They know they’re under threat right now and when they need to know they’ll know, privately.”

She said it’s nobody’s business anyway, because she paid for everything at the Chapleau St. location with her own money. However, at least nine rent cheques for $1,264 given to Beauchamp between January 2013 and July 2015 were written on ARN cheques.

In a separate interview, Lisbona denied she would ever move cats in the middle of the night to avoid being seen, and said that in the recording Thibault and her friend made, she must have been talking about the other person’s cats that were being kept with hers.

“As far as moving cats in the night, I have not done that,” she said. “But there have been a lot of people I know, who have 20, 15, 25 cats who get in trouble with their landlord and the next thing is, the cats are going to be euthanized.

“It’s done because we don’t want to draw attention to a situation that some people will be sympathetic and understanding to, but others will not because they’ll say ‘Oh my god, you had all those cats there.’ “

“But that’s not what happened here,” she said, adding that the cats were brought to ARN’s main shelter, to foster homes and “somewhere outside of Montreal” where “there’s really no neighbours.”

As for some of the issues continuously raised by MAPAQ, she said they were a result of the shelter relying on public donations to operate.

In a response to the petition circulating to have the ARN closed down, the shelter released a statement saying “we are aware that nothing and no one is perfect and money is not always there. But all urgent cases are treated without delay.

“If there were more people like Barbara who dedicated their life, their own money, their health, and 70 hours a week day and night to save and nurse animals, the world would be a better place.”

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